Nuance and grey areas seem to be diminishing qualities in recent years. Many would suggest the growing tendency for binary opinions stems from social media, but that’s a discussion for another day.
What I’ve noticed is how quickly people take sides, particularly regarding West Ham, though it’s likely a broader trend.
This has never been clearer than in recent days, as fans seem desperate to find a single pantomime villain for all of West Ham’s woes.
Yesterday’s comments section on Claret & Hugh and social media reflected a clear divide: pro-Tim Steidten or pro-Julen Lopetegui. Others, however, place the blame squarely at David Sullivan’s feet, believing he’s responsible for everything that goes wrong at West Ham.
It’s certainly easier to simplify things into villains and heroes, as was evident yesterday after a Daily Mail article pinned much of the blame on Tim Steidten for the Hammers’ struggles this season.
Having read the article in its entirety, I disagree with their assessment that West Ham’s German director of football is responsible for the team’s awful defending. In my view, that responsibility lies entirely with Lopetegui, who has been fully backed by Steidten and Sullivan. A whopping £93m was committed to the signings of Max Kilman, Jean-Clair Todibo, and Aaron Wan-Bissaka so surely J-Lo has the tools to make a serviceable defensive unit.
That said, I’m not suggesting Lopetegui is Darth Vader and Steidten some Skywalker-like hero.
Whilst I believe Lopetegui has been a shocking appointment, I’m far from convinced by Steidten either. The signing of Niclas Füllkrug, despite his horrendous injury record since 2019, is baffling. I’m also wary that media sources close to Steidten have undermined both David Moyes and Lopetegui.
While the Mail Online was wrong to blame Steidten for the team’s defending, they were spot on with other observations.
Tim Steidten: Some say messiah whilst others say naughty boy
Wrong man for West Ham’s top job
Then we come to David Sullivan and “the Board.” Again, the situation isn’t as black-and-white as it seems. Both Steidten and Lopetegui were fully backed during the summer transfer window. Aside from the signing of Crysencio Summerville, the recruitment team and Lopetegui were largely left to their own devices.
Lopetegui was indulged with the £40m signing of Kilman, and the Board also sanctioned Guido Rodríguez’s transfer despite concerns. Meanwhile, Steidten overspent massively on the £27m acquisition of Füllkrug, who is unsettled, injury-prone, and on the wrong side of 30.
You’d think this might absolve Sullivan of blame, but he too is culpable. The indecision surrounding Lopetegui’s non-sacking on Thursday was a complete mess.
Worse still is the admission that Lopetegui—a defensive manager—was hired to implement attacking football. It beggars belief that the club identified a need for attacking play but appointed a defensive coach to deliver it.
Perhaps most damning are the list of candidates being floated as potential replacements for Lopetegui. The absence of names like Andoni Iraola, Roberto De Zerbi, Sebastian Hoeneß, and even Marco Silva from the discussion speaks volumes. West Ham may be ambitious in transfer spending, but they do not value managerial appointments in the same way.
Ultimately, I find this binary blame game unhelpful and inaccurate. The truth is, multiple individuals are underperforming. Frankly, I struggle to see anyone at the club capable of fixing this mess—let alone a knight in shining armour
The first requirement of a Director of Football should be the people skills to work constructively with the manager – and Tim seems to fail on that one
My own perception is that actually once Villa had sold Douglas Luiz they no longer needed to sell so they were stringing us along with Duran and kept moving the goal posts – but actually had no intention of selling him to us
We wait in hope that the new manager can take us in an upward direction initially with teh players that are there
COYI
Probably us that moved the goalposts. Wouldn’t be unlike us to mess about in negotiations.
As for the relationship with the manager, it might have helped if he’d been able to bring one in rather than Sullivan telling him his picks were ‘too risky’ and instead getting someone he considered to be a non compensatory safe pair of hands…How’s that one panning out for us?
Spot on, it is a collective failing
Sullivan gave Steindten too much rope and it has shown to be very wrong Steindten couldn’t direct traffic in my opinion and Lopetegui was never the right choice in the first place So I have to agree with this reporter but for different reasons they are all culpable
🌬 a fart a day
There is now the option to get rid of both Lopetegui and Steidten. Replace with Potter and Ashworth who have worked well together previously. Although I’m sure if it didn’t work out, any issues would still be someone else’s fault other than the boards.
Whilst articles on here are very reluctant to pile on Sullivan too much (dont want to bite the hand that feeds you) surely it has to be acknowledged that Lopetegui was Sullivan’s pick and his alone. So the premise of Team Steidten v Team Lopetegui is somewhat flawed. The power struggle is between Sullivan and Steidten, as the latter would have installed someone else if given autonomy over the process.
Sully’s constant desire to sign an unemplyed manager rather than an ambitious and successful (within our scope) one makes all the investment in playing staff futile.
Phil, Sully just wants to appoint any coach that is not a Steidten pick as it will more than likely lead to success and further weaken Sully’s power and bash his ego.
Sully will just make the same mistake he did with Loppy and then blame it all on Tim.
Unfortunately the majority of fans are not being fooled by the disinformation and know that Tim is not to blame.
escept Dame Anette Markham
AKA Karen Brady 🤣🤣🤣
Well said about JLo and the defensive shambles!
I think the Füllkrug criticism is unfair seeing how many games he played last year for Dortmund though.
Sullivan has signed numerous injusy prone players during his awful tenure as chairman….
Wiltshire & Carroll are just two!
As for media leaks, Tim has apparently one source attributed to him Florian Pettenberg.
Sullivan and Brady have top sources at various West Ham fan sites, friends in the British press and on places like SkySports and Talksport.
You’re also right though to state the we missed out on Hurzeler Amorin and are not after Hoeness as Sully doesn’t want a German as coach.
It’s obvious from the news story on C&H about the usual garbage from the Daily Mail that fans are more pro Tim than Sullivan.
You’ve not taken the scope for blame back far enough. The poor and non recruitment under Moyes left us in a position where just too many players needed to come in last window.
Steidten is supposed to analyse statistics and identify players in that way not go out and as a matter of absolute urgency recruit eight or nine in a rush.
Managers are not supposed to integrate such a large number all at once either is a problem Lopetegui should not have had.
We recruited poor players under Moyes who proved unusable so needed to be moved on, and we failed to recruit under Moyes too. Just how long have we been waiting to sign just one striker not in a rush.
The recruitment has been amateur for a long time and it does not work to bring Steidten in and to say to him you need to recruit an entire team in five minutes.
Spot on as always John 👌 Expecting Tim to work with a dinosaur like Moyes who vetoed some exciting players and strikers like Viktor Gyökere who could have been signed for £17m and is now valued at £100m.
Maybe allowing Tim full control of transfers and getting a manager aligned with him would be more cohesive.
If we had signed Viktor Gyökeresfor £17m and installed a £85m release clause like we did with Kudus we would be making money to reinvest.
C&H once said Kudus wasn’t that hard to identify as a talent. The real value of Tim was his influence making sure we secured him ahead of more prestigious clubs.
Surely if everyone thought Kudus was a class player the queue for him would’ve been long. He didn’t go to Arsenal or Chelsea thanks to Tim.
Good posts from both you and John Ayris.
The situation is indeed messy and complex involving all three of them.
It’s staggering that we passed up on Gyokeres when he was at Coventry, he had plain potential and has gone on to become a top striker. Just as staggering that we did go for Hugill, he never did look like anything and went on to become nothing – I actually wonder if that was some sort of favour to someone at PNE…
We’re an ongoing disaster zone where it’s ongoingly difficult for anyone to pick up the pieces, poor decisions constantly have us on the back foot.
When ego and power of vetoe are removed for scouting and data driven analysis the players we sign will improve.
Preferred agents like Salthouse & Mendes are only interested in their own profits.
Tim if trusted will save us a fortune like the wasted amount under Sullivan and has a strong chance of giving us much needed profits to reinvest seeing as we are limited by not owning our own stadium and PSR.
Amateur, I’d say more like novice when it came to recruitment before Tim joined the club.
53 strikers during Sullivan’s tenure tells us all we need to know.
Focusing on Füllkrug when so many failures have occurred before Tim seems like a desperate attempt to discredit Tim even though we all know he wanted Duran as his first choice.
Like Matt said earlier Viktor Gyökeres was Tim’s choice last season but Moyes dithered and we didn’t sign the prolific striker.
Moyes spent £10 on Hugill from Preston and we all know how shocking that waste of money was!
Füllkrug scoring and dismissing the homesick propaganda was equally refreshing. It shut up the top sources but still we see negative stories against the one striker capable of saving our season.
It’s true that real life is messy, and it’s also true that West Ham United FC is very messy. A further truism is that we don’t get all the facts or the full picture from the set of ‘insiders’.
What we do see big time is who gets hired and fired, and what happens each game, and most of the comment on here tries to relate what we see to what we are told.
So In the end, whe’re bound to want to blame someone. And Mr Sullivan is at the top of the tree, and has quite a history . . .